Book Description

No man dies insane or unconscious, as some physiologists assert. Even a madman, or one in a fit of delirium tremens, will enjoy perfect lucidity at the moment of death, though unable to say so to those present. A man may often appear dead, yet from the last throbbing of his heart, and the moment when the last spark of animal heat leaves the body, the brain thinks and the Ego lives over his whole life over again. Speak in whispers, ye, who assist at a death-bed and find yourselves in the solemn presence of Death. Keep quiet just after Death has laid her clammy hand upon the body. Speak in whispers, I say, lest you disturb the quiet ripple of thought, and hinder the busy work of Past casting its reflection upon the Veil of Future. At the end of the seventh Round, at the threshold of the long Nirvana that awaits us after we leave Globe Z, we will remember our collective lives on earth. Irretrievably bad must be that Ego that yields no mite from its fifth Principle, and has to be annihilated in the Eighth Sphere. And even the shells of those good men, whose pages will not be found missing in the great book of lives, will regain their remembrance and self-consciousness after the sixth and seventh principles, enriched with the essence of the fifth, have gone to their gestation period. The flame has left that candle forever; but are the particles that moved, their motion producing the objective flame, annihilated or dispersed for all that? Never. Relight the candle, and the same particles drawn by mutual affinity will return to the wick. Memory is one thing, and perceptive faculties quite another. A madman may remember very clearly some portions of his past life; yet he is unable to perceive anything in its true light because the higher portion of his Manas and Buddhi are paralysed in him. That which will “perceive” in the shell is something that perceives with a borrowed or reflected light. Personal consciousness does always vanish at death; and when the centre of memory is re-established in the shell, it will remember and speak out its recollections but through the brain of some living human being. At the seventh Round men will become gods; and animals, intelligent beings.